Four Things To Know About Westfield’s PropTech Spin-Off

In June, following its purchase by Unibail, shopping centre giant Westfield spun off its PropTech arm into a new listed company with a grand ambition: allow physical retailers to gather as much customer data as Amazon.

OneMarket will look to use technology to allow retailers and retail property owners to gather data about their customers, share this data and communicate with consumers. The idea behind the company is that one retailer or retail owner on its own has a narrow view of the market, but multiple companies networked together have a vastly increased reach and insight.

Here are four key takeaways from the company’s investor presentation when it launched.

Who has signed up?

OneMarket already has some big names on board from both the retail and landlord world. Among retailers, U.S. names Nordstrom, Express, Guess and New Stand have signed up to work with OneMarket. The company said 23 U.K. retailers have also signed up, but did not name any.

Among property owners the company said it had signed contracts to work with Unibail/Westfield (naturally) and also Macerich, Taubman and Steiner & Associates. It said it had signed a deal with LA International Airport for a six-month trial of its Live Receipts product, one of its ways of interacting with consumers.

The expanded view of the customer

OneMarket gave an example of the expanded view of the customer it says its network provides. On its own, one company using its network had insight into about $540 of overall spend from an average customer, OneMarket said. As part of the network, where consumer information is shared between retailers, it had insight into $8,400 of overall spend.

Early products: Meet Hadley

One of the first products OneMarket has created for retailers is Hadley, an interactive consumer-facing platform that is a way for retailers to engage with shoppers. It works across multiple retailers, for both online and in-store purchases, and other consumer experiences. It can store receipts for travel or for purchases, advise on travel routes and help the consumer pay for parking. It is available on Facebook Messenger, SMS and email, and generates data which can be used by retailers for greater customer insight.

How will the company actually make money?

OneMarket gave its most detailed breakdown yet of its business model. Its initial focus will be on two types of clients, retailers and retail owners, and it has two ways of deriving revenue from them: subscription fees, non-recurring fees and providing software as a service; and taking a share of transaction fees, revenue sharing and taking a share of cost savings its products provide.

In future it will also target tech companies, other tech platforms and app developers as customers. It will attempt to make money from them through the above revenue-sharing strategies, plus charging a royalty to access its platform and charging third-party transaction fees.

As its platform grows it will also charge brands to advertise on it.